Fast, actionable advice from Founders, CEOs, and Investors

Ari Newman (Network Catalyst @ Techstars) How to Get From Seed to Series A – Techstars“Build relationships, not pitches,” was discussed as well. The panel debated whether this was true for seed rounds vs. Series A. The gist of the debate was that many Series A round investment decisions can happen when the investor is in “advice mode” and the light bulb goes off.

Anjula Bath (Partner @ Trinity Ventures) Fundraising – From Seed To Series A by Techstars | Free Listening on SoundCloudDon’t ever tell anybody you’re raising money. Because the moment you tell them you’re raising money they think you’re selling them and that always works against you. I didn’t tell anybody I was raising money. I went around saying that I had this amazing idea that was getting all this tgraction and I didn’t know what to do and in 24 hours I got two term-sheets from investors.

Nnamdi Okike (Partner @ 645 Ventures) Charting A Path From Seed To A Competitive Series A Round | TechCruncha top-quartile enterprise-focused VC firm may have a $1 million ARR hurdle for a SaaS deal, or that a top-quartile consumer investor may have a $2 million run-rate revenue hurdle for an e-commerce company. Also for revenue-generating businesses, future growth plans are created that articulate a clear path to becoming a large revenue company with attractive future profit margins.

Shriram Bhashyam (Founder @ EquityZen) The Metrics Required for Raising a Series A RoundE-commerce. This is a dense market, with diminishing margins, and heavy-weight incumbents (see Amazon). Also, VCs are licking their wounds from companies like Fab and Gilt (wasn’t Gilt supposed to IPO for the last 4 years?). $1 million monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is the key metric here.

Shriram Bhashyam (Founder @ EquityZen) The Metrics Required for Raising a Series A RoundMarketplace. Marketplaces are tricky (trust us, we know) because of the chicken/egg problem with supply and demand (buyers want to see good supply, and good sellers will list where there are buyers). It is understood that liquid marketplaces also take a while to build. $500K-$1 million in monthly gross market volume (GMV). 20-30% MoM growth in GMV. Liquidity: > 10% demand/supply ratio. Transaction velocity: the time it takes to have a transaction… (read more)